Diana Shpungin & Nicole Engelmann Statement You are my best friend and I hate you. The intimate behavior of both friends and enemies fascinates us. Our personal relationship feeds the work. We depend on the collaborative effort and explore it as a self-reflexive act that is always aware of itself. Our collaboration thrives through agreement and not through compromise. Camaraderie and jealousy, love and hate exist simultaneously within the work. Through the de-individualization of power and denial of the selfish vantage point, the inner struggles of human relationships are examined. We often investigate normally non-collaborative acts in a collaborative manner as a method of challenging notions of ego, identity and socially defined roles. In conjunction with an art historical context, we borrow from performance, installation, theater, film and movie making trickery. Additionally, we explore collaboration through thematic issues of violence, body, media, fashion, sexuality and childhood play. Within the work, we utilize the color gray as a contrived neutral. We practice constraint. By this, we mean there is no authentic "neutral" and though we attempt to mask our personalities, unavoidably our individualities surface. Our character's identities remain hidden and interchangeable. We perform intuitive acts in safe private spaces. These intimate acts are made public solely through the eye of the camera.